of the vast territory, but admitted of a division into kingdoms, and of the wars which always arise out of such a state of things. A new period arrived when the separate kingdoms were not only invaded and overrun by enemies, but required to listen to the preaching of a strange faith. In the eighth century the Mohammedans were treating the Brahmins as Brahmins had never been treated before. The Arabs had for some time carried on marauding practices on the western coasts of India,—especially by stealing beautiful native women from Scinde for slaves. The impending calamity of a more complete invasion was far more terrible than the fiercest feuds among the native potentates, and the horrors were found in fact to be so dreadful, that most of the inhabitants let the Moslems have their way; so that they were soon settled in the country as its masters.
The poor Hindoos thought they had reached the lowest point of misery when the proud enemy came clustering about their towns, or sweeping like a whirlwind over their plains. At first the great towns resisted: but the fighting men were all slaughtered, and their families sold for slaves: and the rest of the people were compelled to change their religion or pay heavy tribute. Dreary centuries of confusion followed. Hindoo princes here and there joined the conquerors against their neighbours: Hindoo ministers served the newcomers, and forsook their old masters and their old faith: insurrections broke out, and sometimes succeeded for so long a time that the old way of life seemed to be restored, and the intruders to be driven out: and then they came back again, full of wrath and cruelty. The mass of the people suffered most, as in all such cases. There was a show of grandeur and prosperity which fed the pride of rulers: splendid architecture began to arise,—tombs, mosques and palaces, in addition to the pagodas of the old religion: there were more jewels and embroideries, and silk and feather fineries than ever in the courts of princes, conquered and conquering: the great public works were sometimes destroyed in war; and whether they were restored or left in ruins the misery to the labourers was great. If the cultivator or artisan was not ruined by drought, he was made a slave of at the works. The old evils remained amidst the new ones;—no man could rise in life, except a few political or mercantile adventurers; there was no object in life for any man; and the famines became more frequent and terrible than ever when war-blasts swept over the plains, laying all waste. The great reservoirs were breached, and the waters flowed away in the hot sands: the clumps of fruit-trees were cut down, and shade and food were gone: springing crops were trampled down; and the villagers did not venture into their fields to try what could be done. It is no wonder that human life has been held cheap in India; for, during all recorded time, death has made singular havoc with the Hindoos, from birth upwards. Sometimes the peasantry were hunted like wild beasts, and even slaughtered like game in a battue. This was when their numbers were troublesome, or their attachment was suspected, or their fields were coveted. Any of them who had spirit enough fled into the jungle or the hills, and became marauders. From century to century the history is dreary in the extreme: and any one who studies it hears with astonishment the notions of foreign censors of the British occupation of India. That our possession of India should be blamed is natural and reasonable enough; but nothing can be wilder than the supposition that the inhabitants were a peaceful and prosperous and contented people, living under rulers who treated them well, and made a nation of them. A study of any one century of Indian wars, after the Mohammedans gained a footing in the country, would satisfy anybody that any intervention which should stop the process of the extermination of the helpless and spiritless by the desperate and barbarous, must be a blessing.
To pass rapidly over the period last preceding our intrusion into India,—those were the days of the horrors of the predatory tribes, which, like the Pindarries, made a periodical havoc of the richest districts they could reach. Hundreds of horsemen would show themselves in some neighbourhood, where the crops were ripening, and would sweep away everything. They took whatever they could carry, burned the villages, tortured first and then slew the men, women, and children, and rode on further to commit the same ravages. Changing their horses as they went, they kept up their raid for weeks together, and rode thousands of miles,—rarely meeting with any effectual opposition, and always growing more audacious with success. Besides these, there were enemies always prowling among the country populations,—the Dacoits, who rank as the most barbarous banditti of any known country; and the Thugs, who practised the murder of travellers as a religious observance.
Under such lack of security to person and property, industry and commerce could not prosper; and both sank so low that the statesmen and scholars of the foremost kingdoms looked back a thousand years for the period of the greatness of their princes and people. Whatever may have been the abuses perpetrated in the country by the selfishness, violence, and greed of the Englishmen who established a footing in India (and it is scarcely possible to speak too strongly in the case), it is manifestly true that a handful of our countrymen could not have had their own way among a people so fortunate, innocent, and favoured as some foreign commentators on the Mutiny of 1857 have imagined. European adventurers found a population sunk in an ignorance and corruption which no description could convey to Christian readers. The confusion introduced by time and events into their religion had only subjected them more slavishly to their priests, and intensified their submission to their idols. Nothing was improving, and wherever it was possible things were going back. More corpses strewed the way after the great pilgrimages. The famines and plagues spread further and became more frequent as more districts lapsed into waste, and more towns fell into ruin. Nothing shows more plainly the apathetic condition into which the people at large were sunk than the sincere and long-continued belief of